The View from Lazy Point

A Natural Year in an Unnatural World

Winner of the 2012 Orion Book of the Year Award

In this intertwined story, Carl Safina shows us that nature and human dignity require each other. The View from Lazy Pointfollows the arc of the seasons from Carl Safina’s home waters of eastern Long Island to far horizons of the globe, from the Arctic to Antarctica and across the tropics. We encounter bears, Eskimos, salmon, penguins, corals, tropical fishes and local villagers. We see a world brimming with vitality, but changing, with much at stake.

Why do our institutions fail to sense the dangers? Safina shows how philosophy, religion, and economics-all developed before we knew the world was round-are so out of sync with scientific realities that they’re essentially irrational.

But in the cycle of seasons and the waves of migrating fishes and birds, Carl Safina still finds solace and delight and the power and resilience of living things. As revealed by Safina, the world still sings. The challenge now: to keep the music alive, for those who’ll follow.

Book Reviews:

The high quality of his prose makes all this fascinating information such a great pleasure to read."

— Peter Matthiessen on The View from Lazy Point

Safina is like a spider spinning a web: the more silk threads that are attached, the more the reader is entrapped into understanding the connectivity of the world."

— Dr. Patricia Wright, MacArthur Fellow, Stony Brook University on The View from Lazy Point

Written by a brilliant stylist and deeply concerned conservationist. Alive with fresh ideas."

— Richard Ellis on the View from Lazy Point

Excellent storytelling. A superb work."

— Kirkus, Starred Review on The View from Lazy Point

An optimism suffuses this sensible and sensitive book."

— Publishers’ Weekly on The View from Lazy Point

What a marvelously large-handed, energetic, omnivorous book! One can swim at so many levels in its comprehensive inventiveness."

— Ted Hoagland, author of Early in the Season on The View from Lazy Point

A book of beautifully modulated patterns and gracefully stated imperatives…Carl Safina’s books evince two traits not commonly associated with science writing: exquisite language and freely expressed empathy for animals."

— Booklist, starred review on The View from Lazy Point

This book is beautifully written, elegiac and insistent — a very necessary read."

— Sheryl Cotleur, Book Passage booksellers on The View from Lazy Point

A true masterpiece. The writing is both powerful and poetic, the observations keen and telling. Lazy Point just might become the 21st century’s Walden Pond."

— Gary Soucie on The View from Lazy Point

I was flat-out blown away. This thing is a great glittering gem of a book, certainly the first immortal work of popular natural history of the 21st century. It was a thrill and an honor to read. And when I finished I felt young again and full of lightning."